Is there a greater privilege <br />than to breathe sea air? And here, it’s like <br />a front seat at the greatest <br />open-air theatre in the world: <br /> <br />I’m sat here on my coat upon the rock <br />which reappears each time the tide recedes <br />leaving the sand so smooth as if <br />the sea were demonstrating beautifully <br />the relation between its ferocity and power, <br />and innocence, perhaps forgiveness; there’s <br />a little runnel of water around the rock <br />where I sit, notebook and pencil, just as if <br />this must be the very centre of poetry <br />in the world; <br /> <br />the notebook blank <br />as I watch the long-haired dog <br />taking its master for a walk; its poem <br />is the ballet it makes, leaping, racing, panting, <br />looking back, leaving its long hair <br />patterning the sky a fraction after <br />every leap; does it know <br />the ballet is entitled, joy? If I say, <br />poetry in motion, will you read it <br />as if you never heard the phrase before? <br />Racing towards me now, hurling reckless limbs, <br />one sniff at me, but then there’s something else <br />more interesting here in the sand to paw. <br /> <br />Some long intoxicating sea-breath minutes now, of mind’s content <br />to be and just to be; the page stays like the sand, <br />innocent, as white as salt and white as surf; <br />and I, the silent poem that nature has just written.<br /><br />Michael Shepherd<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/0169-lines-in-the-sand/
